LIGETI Miklós
1871, Buda – 1944, Budapest

Love (“Kiss”)

1901
marble

A very successful sculptor of his time, Miklós Ligeti often had to comply with the expectations of his clients when it came to official commissions. By contrast, the works he made for pleasure were free from restrictions and reflect his own intentions. Beside biblical and allegorical nude compositions, he had a fondness for mythological creatures. Works with amorous subjects often feature yearning or teasing nymphs or fauns, serpentine, crawling figures.
One of the most important examples in his art of the symbolic encounter of characters from different worlds is Love, which the Hungarian state purchased the year after it was made. In this two-figure marble composition a naked young man leans over the nymph washed ashore, showering kisses on the fishtailed girl. Ligeti was interested in the representation of magical creatures in the first two decades of the twentieth century; when the themes and idiom of Symbolism and Art Nouveau generally fell out of favour, he too moved on in a different direction.